Dubai!!
Joe told me three months ago that there was a very slim chance that he'd have to go to Dubai on some business....never a place that was on our to-go list, which is probably why I was so eager to get signed on for the trip! What an opportunity! It was a month later before he told me that yes indeed he was making the trip, and knowing me and my insatiable thirst to see the world, he knew that it would definitely include me!
Work was extremely generous to let me tag along and even give us a couple of extra non-work days. I checked my passport, arranged childcare, worked out a ton (of course), banned all carbs, and counted the days!! I also did a little "internet research", which should absolutely be forbidden. The internet seems to know little to nothing about being a tourist in Dubai, and there is loads of misinformation about what to expect. So I packed everything from a bikini to full-length dresses, along with a million pairs of shoes, and a bookcase worth of reading, and my suitcase barely made weight!
Joe is used to flying by private jet. I am used to driving to Spokane long before dawn to take a trip around the world in layovers to make my destination sometime before the next dawn. So imagine which one of us was thrilled with a flight from Pullman (unthinkable!!) to Seattle, where we would catch a direct flight to Dubai! So posh!!
My only view out the window, on our way to Seattle. From now on we will be tucked in the middle somewhere, with a view of the ground from our personal seat-back screen. We made it to Seattle in time to snag some fresh seafood. And then we boarded the 15 hour flight to Dubai. (Ok! The plane had pods! Pods for sleeping, just like in the movies!! No, we did not get pods, but I felt super-privileged to just be on the same plane as pod-dwellers. This would not be the last time on the trip that I would feel like I'd zip-lined to the future.)
Our flight plan.
We were served several meals on our flight, including this lamb, which was delicious. But then, I'm one of the few people I know that actually enjoys plane food. It's just part of the experience, you know?
After leaving Pullman at 12:30 pm on a Friday, we arrived at Dubai on Saturday at 8:00 pm (which would be 8 am Saturday morning, Moscow time). Then it was customs and baggage check and taxis and traffic and check-in.... We got into our hotel room around 11 pm that night, nearly 24 hours from door to door. We had not really slept on the plane, besides a half an hour snooze here and there. We wanted to make sure we were nice and tired by the time we arrived in Dubai, so that we could kick-start our adjustment to the time difference. We settled in, thrilled that we got a corner room and an ocean view...and then we realized one of the windows was actually a sliding glass door. It opened to a private balcony twice the square footage of our hotel room, complete with two chaise lounges and a view of the entire coastline!! It was pretty unbelievable.
We headed down for drinks at the outdoor hotel bar with some of Joe's colleagues. It was a beautiful warm Saturday night. Surprised a little to see cats wondering around the tables...but cheers to a different culture!
Thanks to our extreme fatigue (and some sleep aid) we slept well and were ready to go by 7 the next morning. So we wandered down for breakfast which was a giant buffet with some local cuisine alongside the standard donuts and omelets (which I absolutely adore!). And tea! I think breakfast was definitely a highlight of my trip. I loved the part of jet lag that allowed me to feel wide-awake at 7 am (which never happens in real life) and I love it when people cook for me and bring me tea by the gallons. And it was always fresh and warmish out there on the patio in the morning and there wasn't any rush. Joe and I were always the first people to sit outside. We couldn't miss it!
Then we headed down to check out the beach...
Joe didn't have anything on the calendar our first day there, so we spent a lot of time relaxing and reading by the pool.
....and up on our private balcony!!
This guy brought his camels down to the beach every day to give people rides....I waited until the very last day to give it a try and then we completely ran out of time!! Maybe next time....
An observation about the beach: this was just the resort beaches.... All the women wore bikinis, unless they were in full cover-ups and head-coverings, and the men, of course, were dressed in more European wear...speedos and the like. There were signs at the edge of the beach requesting that one wear "respectful" clothing off the sand, and that mostly meant no cleavage or daisy dukes. Hardly anyone wore high heels, unless they were covered up head-to-toe anyway. And there were hardly any tattoos! I once walked the beach from end to end and only counted 3 tattooed individuals. Everyone in that resort area spoke English all of the time, but I rarely heard anything even close to an American accent. Joe and I tried to spot Americans based only on looks, and could hardly find any that we would deem truly down-home America. It was the guys who usually gave it away. You see a guy sporting a speedo, or denim capris...you can guess he didn't probably come from Detroit, haha. Forgive the stereotype, if you can :)
Anyway, it was just my sort of place: beachwear on the beach but regular sun wear on the boardwalk. Very pleasant. The whole city definitely reminded us of a cross between Vegas and Honolulu, without the crazy!
Sunday evening we went to the beachside bar around sunset to order some cocktails. You could only purchase alcohol at the hotels...all of the beachside hotels (of which there were many!) could only serve 'mocktails' (of which there were plenty!).
Here are our cocktails! At $25/each, they were the most expensive cocktails we have ever had! Needless to say, they were the last cocktails we had that week...haha! Beautiful setting, though!
Then we headed downtown to check out the Dubai Mall, which was insane, and get a good look at the Berj Khalif, which was, well, just hard to believe!
The city was built on a desert entirely in the last 40 years. They struck oil in the 70s and there has been non-stop building since then. The buildings are all very tall and very modern and very new! It's actually quite beautiful, and futuristic. We got around mostly by taxi or hotel car. There was no such thing as a 'beater', you were more likely to see a Porsche or a Mustang, or even a Lamborghini. And one day, on a walk down the 'strip' near the hotel, I saw a Bugatti Veyron. I had never seen one, of course, but I knew immediately that it had to be expensive, and after describing it to the guys that night, I found out what it was. Apparently it is a 3 million dollar car and there are only a few hundred in the world...most of them in Dubai.
We waited for about an hour to see the fountains down at the mall. They are like the Bellagio fountains in Vegas. We later found out that they had stopped the fountains for a couple of days out of respect for the death of the Saudi king.
We found a Lebanese restaurant with the most amazing hummus. I didn't really remember anything else, the pita and hummus, soooo good!
A water feature at the mall...
....and the shark at the aquarium. That was so creepy! He never shuts his eyes!!
Monday morning we spent more time at the beach. And we went paddle-boarding for the first time ever! That was one for the bucket list! And what better place than Dubai :)
Soda was expensive and tasted much different than at home....but I did manage to find this Dr. Pepper in a shop near the hotel. I'm certain it was directly imported from America, as it was a full 12 oz and had no Arabic anywhere on the can :)
Monday night we spent at a work party on the hotel lawn. Tried a lot of more of the local food.
Tuesday, Joe had to head in to work, so I spent the day exploring the resort area on my own. I took a job on the beach and I ate lunch at this little café. I had just gotten my food and was enjoying the view when I heard some hacking right behind me. A little boy totally threw up on the restaurant patio!! The mom wrapped the kid up and set him on some chairs to sleep, while her other son and her ordered and enjoyed (?) some lunch. Blechity.
Mango ice cream.
I had brought like 6 books, and wasn't really interested in any of them. Thankfully I'd found a good beach read on my phone and another at the mall the day before. Nothing like a book on the beach.
After Joe got off of work we searched for a good ocean view café with some yummy middle eastern cuisine. We found a House of Curry. It was a beautiful view and some pretty good food....pretty unreal. I love traveling with Joe, because he travels like I do: a little adventure, a lot of sun and relaxing, some really good new food, and well, a good bottle of wine. We missed the wine, but managed to squeeze in the rest :)
The hotel left us snacks :)
On Wednesday morning, Paula Jones picked me up at the hotel and took me out to show me the rest of Dubai. We headed down to the market. Traffic and parking was a little crazy down by the water, and trucks would stop right in front of you to unload all their wares.
The market was fun, and could be a little intense. I was looking at some beautiful scarves, but the guy selling wasn't going to tell me how much they were until I'd settled on some I liked. He told me they'd be 1100 dirhams, which is roughly $300. I didn't have anything close to that on me in cash, and he was insisting that they were such a great deal, and very high quality. I literally could not pay for them, and was in no way trying to haggle. But as we were trying to leave another clerk would block my way and hand me more stuff.... The first guy was throwing out lots of numbers, but finally got down to 110 dirhams.... which I actually had, so I purchased them. He made me promise not to tell the others. I loved the market and picked up some fun stuff there. Lots of beaded things and hand painted items. There were gorgeous painted pencil boxes that the man wouldn't even negotiate on because he insisted they were made with camel bones. I still regret not buying them....
Piles of spices.
After the market, we went and found a water taxi to take us across the canal for lunch on the other side. It was the coolest thing, and charged a quarter for the ride. The canal was pretty crowded but everyone just seemed to make way for one another...
This is the second time I saw salad like this. Just a mixture of veggies that you can assemble yourself. And pita bread. I love pita bread!!
It was awesome catching up with Paula, and she had so much insight in the culture and dress of the people in Dubai. I learned so much!
We took a walk down to the original sheik's home. The home he would live in before they all struck oil and became fabulously rich. He now lives in much finer quarters and drives a gold-plated Porsche, which Paula actually saw parked at the bank one day. Paula also said that a Porsche was the "mommy" car at the school. You know, like the mini-van, haha!
This was a bread and breakfast facing the canal. Everything is so clean and tidy!
This was the first mosque. Just a square room!
Back on the water taxi to get back to the car...
Ships carry everything from here out the canal and all over the middle east. This is a pile of microwaves.
The metro. Very modern.
I got Joe from his meetings and we headed down to the Mall of the Emirates to see the indoor ski resort. I say resort instead of hill, because they had sledding and a luge, and Frozen singers and a snowball that you could get inside and ride. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before inside a mall!
We couldn't find any food, so we hunted down the metro to head back down to the beach resorts. The restaurants were all pretty busy, but we finally found a spot in an upstairs balcony. But it was very smoky from all the hookahs. Everyone smoked hookahs! There was even a huge "café" on the sand full of couches for lying there and smoking. It was called the "Smoky Beach". We were having a hard time finding something to eat and we were definitely hitting a wall from the jet lag, and just downright hangry. So we left that restaurant and ended up finding a sandwich at a French restaurant to take home to our own balcony. I was so in love with this French place! And they guy that worked it thought that was pretty cool, so he gave us free croissants while we waited :)
The top shelf were king cakes...the kind with the hidden coin. I was curious how many are sold just on a daily basis, and if that is a cultural thing. But we got the strawberry tart instead :)
Thursday was Joe's last day of meetings so I spent the day trying to get bored on the beach. I like to run out of things to do on vacation, so that I feel like I've done everything there is to do! It wasn't likely this time around. I started gathering seashells to take home to the girls but it wasn't long before my hands were completely full. I was in a serious dilemma, because I didn't want to go all the way back to the hotel, there were so many shells left to be had! Just as I was maxing out and getting desperate, a woman in full covering with just the slits for her eyes was sitting on the beach and asked me if I wanted a plastic bag! I was so grateful! I thought how nice it was to feel welcome in a strange country. It kinda made my day.
There were so many restaurants, and I was running out of time, but I had never tried a falafel so I stopped at Operation Falafel to see what it was all about. I asked the waitress to bring me the favorite kind and she brought me shawarma. It was lamb and it was amazing!
That night we celebrated with all the work folk on a week well done! We ate at this hotel restaurant on the balcony that actually served wine :) We were facing the water, and around 8:30 a monstrous firework display started out on the beach. Apparently the fireworks are supposed to happen every single night down there. But because of the death of the Saudi king, they'd had a bit of a hiatus. A beautiful way to end the evening!
We woke up on Friday with a very long wish list of things to do. It was our last day!
We started out again with breakfast outside, my favorite. Then we headed down to the beach. We wanted to get in some more paddle boarding (which was definitely a trip highlight) and a ride on the beach camel. Sadly, we did not have time for both. The camel would have to wait for our next visit ;)
We did go paddle-boarding though. It was a beautiful day and the hottest we'd had so far! So the background is not so pretty. They are currently building the world's largest ferris wheel. Which will be lovely, I'm sure. The cranes, not so much.
After soaking up the sun, we cruised back down to the Mall of the Emirates to actually give the skiing a try! You rent everything right down to the coat and snow pants. I pulled them on over my shorts and tee, and we headed up an escalator with our boots and skis to get to the hill. If you wanted hats and mittens you had to buy them. I thought we would surely be fine, it was like 80 outside after all. By the end, I would've paid a pretty penny for some gloves...it did get a little chilly out there in the snow :)
The chair lift went about 1/2 a mile an hour. So after the first ride we ditched it to take the much faster tow rope.
The tow rope was for "experts only".
The view of the lodge from the hill...complete with fake fire. Not gas fire. Actually animated fire.
After an hour on the hill, we switched back to our summer gear and took the metro to the Dubai Mall to get our ride to the top of the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world!
The view of the resort beach far down the coast. We ended up on the 124th floor, out of the possible 148 floors....it was a 90 second elevator ride. And down below you saw the tops of skyscrapers! It took 6 years to build, and I imagine some time developing all the land around it. It is a stunning area.
By the time we made it down the elevator, we were starving! We managed to score a good seat at a Lebanese restaurant. I had more shawarma and tons more pita bread, it is really good!
We had a good view of the fountains, and they went off 3 times while we ate there. Once they played to Whitney Houston's song "I will always love you." I will never hear that song again without thinking of these fountains.
The water reached 15+ stories high!
From there, we headed back to our hotel room. It had been a very full day! We opened a bottle of wine from the mini-bar, got comfy on the balcony in our chaise lounges and blankets and watched the firework show over the water. It rivaled any of the northwest fireworks I've seen. It was definitely the perfect send-off to our perfect vacation! I'm actually really hoping we get to go back someday.
